Ram Oren

Duke University, USA

Ram Oren received the B.S. degree in forest resource management from Humboldt State University (Calif, 1978), followed by the M.S. degree in forest ecology and the Ph.D. degree in physiological ecology from Oregon State University (Corvallis, Oregon, 1980 and 1984, resp.). Since completing the postdoctoral studies on acid rain and forest decline at the University of Bayreuth (in 1986), he has been at the School of the Environments (and its previous incarnations), Duke University, where he works currently as a Professor and Chair of the Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy. Together with his students, he investigates how forests influence the rate of water and carbon exchange between the biosphere and atmosphere. Combining principles and tools of plant and ecosystem ecology, plant-soil hydraulics, and microclimate, he links soil, plant, and atmospheric attributes of surface resistance to these exchanges, and to the rate of change of resistance with changing plant-resource availability and climate, both spatially and temporally. He is also the Science Principle Investigator of the Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment, a US Department of Energy sponsored project at the Duke Forest. Thus, his recent work investigates the controls over carbon allocation among plant and ecosystem pools, and the rate of carbon movement between pairs of pools. For over a decade, he has been a Member of the Editorial Board of Oecologia and Tree Physiology.